Technology

Amazon is expanding its real-world footprint with another unconventional physical product: a shopping cart. While it certainly looks like an aesthetic upgrade to your standard grocery store cart, the Dash Cart, as it’s called, is in fact a smart version of the tried-and-true food transport vehicle. It’s equipped with a touchscreen and other various hardware components to automatically detect what items you’re placing inside and even how many of those items you’ve picked off the shelf. When you’re done shopping, you’re allowed to take the cart through a special lane that checks you out digitally without requiring a human cashier to ring you up. The idea builds on Amazon’s approach of trying to take the convenience it’s mastered in the digital realm and bring it into the real world. For year...

If you’ve been eagerly awaiting the day when self-flying drone startup Skydio becomes a true competitor to DJI, you might taken today’s announcement poorly. You might have assumed that after two impressive drones that didn’t quite fulfill their full potential, Skydio’s decision to build its next flying flagship camera exclusively for the enterprise and military markets meant it was done with consumers entirely. But Skydio CEO Adam Bry tells The Verge he’s just getting started — there are more consumer drones on the way. “We have more products coming in that market that we’re excited about,” reveals Bry, saying the timing was simply right to expand into the enterprise market, too. In both markets, he says, the goal isn’t to try to beat DJI by copying DJI, but rather to build drones that can...

EV startup Fisker Inc. wants to power its first SUV with Volkswagen’s mass-manufactured modular electric vehicle platform, or “MEB,” and it says it is in talks with the German automaker to do just that. In fact, the prototype SUV that Fisker Inc. revealed at the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show was built on the MEB platform. Fisker Inc. laid all of this out in an investor presentation that was assembled ahead of its push to become a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange, which the startup formally announced on Monday. The presentation was one of many pages of documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission by the publicly listed company Fisker Inc. plans to merge with, Spartan Energy Acquisition Corporation, which was formed by investment firm Apollo Global Manag...

Twitch has unbanned President Donald Trump, two weeks after suspending his account for “hateful conduct.” Trump’s account, which was used to broadcast new and past campaign rallies, was banned for racist comments made by the president on two occasions. Twitch pointed to remarks at his recent rally in Tulsa, where he referred to criminals as “hombre[s],” and remarks from a rebroadcast of the 2015 event announcing his candidacy, when he called Mexican immigrants criminals and “rapists.” The ban came days after Twitch swore it would crack down on harassment, as streamers began sharing stories of harassment and assault within the industry. By banning Trump, Twitch seemed to indicate that no one is above the rules. The question now is how much longer Trump can last on Twitch. Should his campaig...

Over 60 women and nonbinary people have accused influential comics author Warren Ellis of manipulative and predatory behavior toward female fans and creatives. An open letter and dozens of statements were collected on a site created by some of his alleged targets, and have also been shared with The Guardian, which published a story on the allegations today. The site was launched after several weeks of less specific allegations, including some posted on Twitter. The testimonials describe a long pattern of drawing young female fans into online or offline sexual encounters, which often devolved into controlling behavior or insults. According to The Guardian, Ellis secretly maintained up to 19 relationships at a time, while running online forums where many women believed their participation wa...

Employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are calling for the federal agency to address what they say are “ongoing and recurring acts of racism and discrimination” against its Black employees, NPR reported. More than 1,000 CDC employees signed a letter to director Robert Redfield describing a “pervasive and toxic culture of racial aggressions.” “In light of the recent calls for justice across this country and around the world, we, as dedicated public health professionals, can no longer stay silent to the widespread acts of racism and discrimination within CDC that are, in fact, undermining the agency’s core mission,” the letter reads, according to NPR, which obtained a copy. The letter notes that Black employees are only 10 percent of CDC’s leadership. In addition to dive...

The iPhone “batterygate” saga was one of the bigger controversies that Apple has ever faced. Apple’s throttling of iPhones with aging batteries prompted a class action lawsuit, and now you can register to get your chunk of the settlement that was reached earlier this year. Per MacRumors, there’s now a website where US consumers who owned an affected iPhone can go to file a claim. To meet the criteria, you must currently or have previously owned: An iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6S, iPhone 6S Plus, and / or an iPhone SE that ran iOS 10.2.1 or later before December 21st, 2017 An iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus that ran iOS 11.2 or later before December 21st, 2017 As part of the settlement terms, Apple agreed to pay out a maximum of $500 million. The company will “provide a cash payment of approx...

Seventeen states and Washington, DC have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration’s policy that would prevent international students who are taking online courses from remaining in the US. ICE’s guidelines, announced on July 6th, stated that in order to remain in the country for the fall 2020 semester, international students must be enrolled in in-person classes at their schools or be subject to “immigration consequences including, but not limited to, the initiation of removal procedures.” Meanwhile, students who remain in their own countries would only be permitted to take remote classes and maintain their “Active status” if their school will only be offering remote classes. Under the previous policy, the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) allowed international students t...

Ubisoft will let you redeem a free copy of open-world hacking simulator Watch Dogs 2 for PC right now just by logging in to your Uplay account. To snag your copy of the 2016 game, head to this page on Ubisoft’s website where you’ll be asked to log in. When you do, you’ll see a message that you’ve successfully claimed the game and that it will soon show up in your Uplay library. It’s unclear how long the giveaway will be going on, though, so you might want to jump on the deal sooner rather than later. Ubisoft had previously said the game would be offered for free if you watched its Ubisoft Forward digital press conference on Sunday and were logged in to Uplay. But technical problems prevented some people from claiming the giveaway. Ubisoft isn’t the only video game company to experience tec...

Skydio, a startup that makes autonomous drones that fly themselves with little human intervention, is entering the commercial drone market with its new X2 model. The X2 is Skydio’s first non-consumer device and it’s marketed toward government agencies, the military, and other organizations that require aerial surveillance or surveying, and it comes with a built-in infrared thermal camera. The X2 announcement coincides with Skydio’s new round of $100 million in funding, led by German multinational company Siemens’ Next47 firm. Skydio first entered the market a little more than two years ago with the Skydio R1. The R1 was an autonomous drone that sported impressive artificial intelligence-powered obstacle avoidance and other sensors and software features that let it seamlessly fly itself thr...

Workers for grocery delivery platform Shipt are planning to walk off the job and not accept new orders on Wednesday, July 15th, saying the company’s move toward an algorithm-based pay structure will reduce their pay by at least 30 percent. “This seismic company shift is occurring at the same time that its shoppers — essential workers taking unprecedented risks during this pandemic — are already suffering significantly,” a group of Shipt shoppers wrote in a Medium post, “and at the same time Shipt — a corporation profiteering off consumer fears during this pandemic — is experiencing obscene increases in its sales.” Shipt launched a new pay model, internally called “V2” in a few of its markets near the end of 2019, replacing its previous flat-fee model. It will roll out to a dozen new market...

Sony’s new Xperia 1 II smartphone is purpose-built for one very specific thing: to make your phone work a little bit more like a standalone Sony Alpha camera. It’s a long time coming: Sony has made dozens of Xperia phones since its first one in 2008, but until now, none of them have had an identity this clear or compelling. Every smartphone brand tries to create its own ecosystem — or at least its own experience. You surely understand what it’s like to live in Apple’s iPhone world, Google’s Pixel world, or Samsung’s Galaxy world. But there’s long been an entire Sony world that’s just as well-defined, and it has a community of users that’s just as dedicated. It’s just that Sony’s world wasn’t about smartphones; it was about its Alpha line of cameras. Sony has finally taken the first steps o...